Lady who has had a pacemaker all her life

Comments ()

Sort:

SIGN IN WITH

ORPOSTWITHOUTREGISTRATION

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Be the first one to review.

We have sent you a verification email. To verify, just follow the link in the message

Lady who has had a pacemaker all her life

By -

Mumbai Mirror

Ankit Ajmera

Created: Sep 3, 2013, 00:00 IST

facebooktwitterincom

Lady who has had a pacemaker all her life

Ad professional Sabah Asnani, born with a ‘missing heartbeat’, on what’s it like to live with a pacemaker all her life If Sabah Asnani ever travelled on a flight that you were on, it’s possible that you’d notice her zipping through door frame metal detectors. Gliding through them leisurely won’t go down well with a 3cm x 5cm gadget that sits in the right side of her chest.

The 31-year-old ad firm owner has been living with a cardiac pacemaker since she was born on October 10, 1981.

Her mother Ghousia Asnani, a professor of zoology at Poona College, had had a normal delivery, but the baby girl that lay beside her was a deep blue in colour. The chances of her survival were slim.

Dr Dev Pahlajani, interventional cardiologist at Breach Candy Hospital, where she was admitted, diagnosed her with intrauterine myocarditis, a rare disorder in which the heart beats at an abnormally low rate. While a regular infant’s heart rate is 110-120 beats a minute, Asnani’s was beating at eight-10 beats per minute. Blood lay unpumped in her body, turning her skin dark.

The disorder is triggered by a viral infection inside the womb, and hampers fibres in the heart that act as a natural pacemaker, generating electrical impulses that keep the heart going.

In Asnani’s case, since the electrical signals had been interrupted, the myocardium (muscular middle layer of the heart wall composed of spontaneously contracting cardiac muscle fibres that make it beat and pump blood) was non-functional.

This condition is not to be confused with congenital heart block which also involves problems with the heart’s electrical system. “Unlike in congenital heart block, where the heart can manage 30-40 beats a minute, surviving with intrauterine myocarditis is impossible because the heart beat is almost missing,” says Dr Pahlajani.

The fixing plan Dr Pahlajani decided he would fit the baby with the then revolutionary Medtronic pacemaker that could artificially generate the heart’s missing electrical signals. It was a tedious surgery that went on for hours. In the 1980s, pacemakers used to be as large as the human fist, and powerful only to pace the two lower chambers of the heart. Just like Iron Man’s first electromagnate heart implant, powered by an arc reactor, was not designed to sustain flight, Asnani’s first pacemaker wasn’t fit to sustain prolonged physical activity.

“Because she was a baby of five pounds, the physical energy requirements of her body were not large. It worked just fine for her,” he says. Ever since, Asnani has been dependent on the pacemaker. Ghousia Asnani decided she’d make her daughter’s life as normal as possible. “I decided not to have a second child and focussed all my love on Sabah,” she says warmly. Asnani went to school in Muscat, and other than her teachers and a few close friends, no one was aware of her condition. “There was no point making it public. It would’ve only made her conscious about her condition,” says her mother. The plan worked. Asnani, like any other girl, painted the playground red, and although she had to stay clear of a high endurance sport like the 1,000-metre run (“I didn’t care for it, anyway,” she shrugs), it did allow her to play badminton which she enjoyed.

Done it all Three decades later, Asnani has done it all, including trekking in Bhutan. “A group of 10 of us covered Paro, Timphu and Punakha. When everyone decided to go for a three-hour climb to the Taktsang Palphug Monastery located on a 2,300 feet cliff, I did too,” she says. With every step, the ‘intelligent’ pacemaker fired signals that matched the pace of her feet. Asnani says she can take on any challenge (“deliver a baby, do the zumba, which I’ve signed up for recently”), and seems far from nervous although her fifth implant is due in 15 months. What she does have to be careful about is radio frequency and electromagnetic waves generated by mobile phones, anti-theft detectors at malls and metal detectors at airports that can interfere with the pacemaker’s functioning. She has been advised to use hands-free, or hold the mobile to her left ear since the pacemaker sits on her right side. Asnani smiles to say, she has an advantage over the strong-hearted. If she were to ever suffer a heart attack, unlike the rest of us, her pacemaker which is programmed to pump her heart at 75 beats a minute, will not shut shop.

Her 4 pacemakers

Every year, Asnani makes a trip to Mumbai from her Pune residence for a reading of the pacemaker. Its battery life averages between eight to 10 years (it has a three month back-up after hitting a low), and each time the battery runs out, Asnani must go in for an implant. She had her second implant in 1988. With an increase in physical activity, the two functioning chambers weren’t enough for the job. The third Medtronic pacemaker implanted in May 1997 made it possible for all four chambers to operate. After completing a Masters in international marketing from Birmingham University, UK, in 2005, Asani went for a fourth implant in 2006, and this one came equipped with intelligent sensors able to regulate the heart rate according to the needs of her body. The size of the device reduced by a third.

Her first pacemaker was as large as a human fist and could only pace two lower chambers of the heart

The cost Pacemaker: Rs 2 lakh approximately

Hospital: Recovery takes three to four days; cost could average at Rs 2 lakh
Total: Rs 4 lakh

End of the article

Comments (0)

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.